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About Me

I am a PhD student in the Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris, currently on the academic job market of 2025-2026. I am a member of the Sustainability and Organizations (S&O) Institute, the Purpose research chair, and the GREGHEC research unit. My research focuses on explaining how purpose within firms influences employees' perception of their firm and their behavior within the firm. I am the recipient of the Special Fellowship scholarship of S&O center Joly Family Chair in Purposeful Leadership. My research interests are inspired by my professional experience in both managerial and non-managerial roles. Before joining HEC Paris, I worked in the chemical industry and the sports industry, as well as in the culture industry. I completed a research masters degree in analytical chemistry at the Lebanese University and an MBA in Entrepreneurship at ESCP Business school and ESA Business School.

Main Research Projects

Is team commitment related to dialogue about corporate purpose?

Co-authored with Rodolphe Durand, Long Range Planning (Forthcoming)

This paper examines the relationship between communication on a firm's purpose between a team leader and individual team members (referred to as "purpose dialogue") and the resulting levels of team commitment. We hypothesize that increased dialogue about purpose will lead to higher team commitment by enhancing consensus on the team's tasks and objectives, a relationship moderated negatively by the variation of leader-member exchange quality and positively by the autonomy given by leaders to individual team members. Using data from 469 firms and 57,440 individual observations, we find support for our hypotheses across different contexts.

Employee Turnover in Penalized Firms: The Moderating Role of Corporate Purpose

Solo project, working paper (SMS 2024)

In this work, I study the negative influence of a firm's purpose claims on employee turnover in the context of firm misconduct. I hypothesize that valuable employees' turnover is weaker when firms are sanctioned, and corporate purpose is a positive moderator of this relationship. I use a 10-year panel data on S&P 500 companies with data from Compustat, Violation tracker (US), and SEC 10K reports.

Corporate Purpose as Legal Vulnerability

Co-authored with Yasir Diwan & Rodolphe Durand, early-stage project

In this work, we aim to study the influence of a firm's purpose in the targeting and sanctioning of firms in the context of misconduct.

Consult my CV

Pauline Asmar - CV